Based on this, it seems like the odds of an Earth-sized planet with a Moon-sized moon would actually be pretty darn rare throughout the galaxy. This lends credence to something I was told by my 9th grade science teacher who told us that, if Aliens really did visit Earth it was surely to watch total lunar eclipses which must be incredibly rare because of the fact that the exact size of the moon, and the exact apparent size of the sun all have to line up exactly. Lots of variables there.

BTW, what if the planetary object that crashed with the planet, is our very Earth, and we displaced that planet?.

*puts nerd fez on*

IIRC, the origin of the Angels is that there was an ancient alien race that seeded the universe with life, in the form of gigantic spherical seeds. In the case of Earth, it was accidentally hit by two different seeds. Adam came first, slamming into the earth and creating the moon, with the seed ending up buried in Antarctica coontil SEELE set off Second Impact). The other seed, Lilith, ended up buried beneath Japan (becoming the Geofront, and having SEELE utilize Lilith to help the Eva project).

The reason for the Angel/Human battles is because it's two different strains of life that should have had two separate worlds.

*removes nerd fez*

/seriously, though, there's NO need to read that far into the mythos//New 3.0 trailer was awesome, though

If you've seen the Discovery Channel show "If We Had No Moon," it was Robin Canup (author of one of the Science articles) who was featured in that film. I don't remember too much about the sim she was describing, but I do remember how good she looked in those sunglasses.

So if we had no moon, then sentient life would not exist on Earth since the planet's climate would be far too wild to allow for any but the smallest, most simplest forms of life. (I seem to also recall some scientists positing that life came about on this planet because of tidal action in small pools holding the early building blocks of life in which the first bacteria were formed.)

In other words, no moon= no sentient, higher forms of life. To calculate how much sentient life there is out there in the universe, we would have to determine just how rare the formation of a moon like ours is. (If it's an uber rare phenomenon, it would explain why we've seen no aliens. Maybe ours is the first race to ever get this far. Maybe we're alone in the universe.)

In any case, I do think a "does this planet have an Earth-like moon" should be inserted as a factor into the Drake Equation. There's evidence at least to suggest it is necessary.

For some reason this thought is a downer. That, and the heat-death of the universe. Neither of these concepts will ever have much of an impact on my life outside the realm of thought, as I'll be dead a brazillian years before they possibly could. But still.

Although I do feel that if we were to "discover" alien life when it showed up to exterminate us I'd be way more sad about that, so we've got that going for us at least.

yourmomlovestetris:(I seem to also recall some scientists positing that life came about on this planet because of tidal action in small pools holding the early building blocks of life in which the first bacteria were formed.)

Pretty much. If the oceans were just big stagnant pools they wouldn't be very conducive to life.

asked a friend of mine who was an astrophysics major about the capture theory once.

there was a fark-ton of math but ultimately he mapped it out on paper and showed to me how it's theoretically possible but the probability is on the order of having a winning lotto ticket worth 300 mil falling out of the sky and landing directly on your erect penis.

that is to say, 'not terribly fookin' likely, yeah?' in his words.

and then there's the whole chemical similarity to earth, etc.

although the chemical simularity could be explained by simultaneous accretion formation.

Based on this, it seems like the odds of an Earth-sized planet with a Moon-sized moon would actually be pretty darn rare throughout the galaxy. This lends credence to something I was told by my 9th grade science teacher who told us that, if Aliens really did visit Earth it was surely to watch total lunsolar eclipses which must be incredibly rare because of the fact that the exact size of the moon, and the exact apparent size of the sun all have to line up exactly. Lots of variables there.